where orders emerge

Humility Schmumility

As the House Democratic Caucus was voting today to support your candidacy to become the next Speaker of the House, you declared that you will “go forward with confidence and humility.” I don’t question your confidence; I’m confident that you overflow with it. But I guffaw at your posing as person of humility. Here are only some of my reasons:

You support a policy that prevents low-skilled workers from competing for jobs by offering to work at wages below those that you and your colleagues in Congress somehow divine are minimally acceptable for these workers to accept – how arrogant of you.

You join with many of your Congressional colleagues to compel individual Americans to do as taxpayers what they choose not to do as private citizens, namely, subsidize makers of biofuels – how arrogant of you.

Through your support for that great geyser of cronyism, the U.S. Export-Import Bank, you force Americans to funnel money to foreign corporations that buy particular U.S. exports – how arrogant of you.

This list of your arrogances can be greatly extended. But there’s no need to do so. The very fact that you seek power over others is itself sufficient to prove that there isn’t a humble bone in your body.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030